


End of Small Sanctuary

by seraphim_grace



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, Genderfuck, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-04
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-10 22:55:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 19,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/seraphim_grace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of ficlets exploring what if dean had been born a girl</p><p>This is an ongoing series, each ficlet stands alone, but feeds into an overall theme, not an arc, but a life<br/>they skip backwards and forwards in time, some from before the show, some during, some after.<br/>In my head canon for this they never made a season 6</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. End of Small Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: End of Small Sanctuary

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- _O lyric love_

Castiel's eyes are brilliantine, weighty and cold. Dean is amazed that they can express so much whilst saying nothing at all. They are like the glass eyes of dolls and yet when Castiel looks at her Dean feels cherished. She hates that.

She's not worthy. She's just Dean, a scrapper, her dad's leather coat and walmart jeans, ugly sports bras and no idea how to put on makeup.

She can take out a vampire or a werewolf or monsters no one has ever heard of but for a select few hunters but no one took the time to show her how to use a tampon or measure her for a bra. She's more boy than girl, brought up by necessity to hunt, to protect, to deal.

Yet when Castiel looks at her she resents her sloggi panties and sports bra, she wants to wear the pretty lace things she sees in shops. She wants to wear skirts and pantyhose, though she never really has, and maybe heels. She wants to be beautiful for him.

She wants long hair like a movie star and sleek curves, her own long gone to athleticism and fighting. Breasts strapped down, stomach flat, hips sleek and thighs scarred. She wears her hair short because it's easier. Maybe Ellen could, or Jo, show her, but then would come the girly chick flick moments. She has an image of herself stood there as Ellen gushes "I knew this would happen" but Dean doesn't deserve Cas, he's gorgeous and so kind and ultimate and Dean's just an old hunter with too many scars and too short hair.

Yet he looks at her. He looks at her as if he thinks she's something precious, and his touches, never sexual, never possessive, are tender, whether it's the linger of finger tips as he passes her a knife, a hand on her shoulder reminding her he's got her back.

Dean's always been the protector, and Castiel, not Sam, never Sam, wants to protect her, not because she's a girl, not because she's weak, but because two swords are better than one.

So as she stands in the middle of the aisle in the high end department store, where light flowery shift dresses flutter in the air conditioning and the assistant looks at her like she's something stuck to her shoe, like she doesn't have over a grand burning a hole in the back pocket of her cheap jeans, and she wants to spend it, she wants to look good for Castiel.

Dean bucks up her courage, wrapping pride around herself like armour. "Hey," she says looking at the girl, "you can help me, I've got a wedding to go to, and he's an ex, yanno," the girl smiles, "I wanna be fabulous, think of me like your own barbie, dress me."

"What do you need?" the girl asks, thinking now of the commission and the bonus to her paypacket, Dean might even leave a tip.

"Everything." Dean answers with a smile.

When she leaves the store Dean feels pretty for the first time in possibly her entire life, better certainly than when Dad took her to get her first bra.

She has a dress in a paper carrier bag, and has changed her dad's leather coat for a fitted leather one that smells wonderful. She's wearing makeup and perfume and she knows now she feels brave enough to use the charmed earrings that Bobby gave her for her twenty first, and the amulet Sam gave her just makes her look quirky. She's wearing pretty underwear, and white pantyhose, which feel strangely chill against her legs, and bright green leather mary janes.

She feels beautiful.

Sam's waiting by the impala and when he sees her, he scoffs "looks like I finally got a sister," before getting into the car. She slides in behind the driving seat and uses an old napkin to wipe the lipstick off - it's not like Castiel would appreciate it anyway - right.


	2. Innocent moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Innocent Moon

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- _O lyric love_

When Dean starts junior high, staying with Pastor Jim as her father rested up from some thing or other, she doesn't remember, Pastor Jim walks Sam from school and it means she can, for the first time in her life, stay after school.

She won't be around long enough for the musical or the play, so drama is out, she doesn't have time to learn an instrument so there goes band, but there's a strange and vicarious thrill to hanging around with girls, because it's new.

She stays behind through Pastor Jim's open hours for his parishioners, and learns to knit and to sew. It's practical she tells herself, she can mend their clothes and make socks and it's something to do in the back of the Impala when they go. It's something she can take with her.

It becomes a thing, in good will stores she picks up the stray balls of wool and sits in the back of the car knitting socks and gloves because they last longer, it's cheaper, and well it keeps Dean quiet so Dad doesn't complain.

Sam does when oddment scarves make him get laughed at in school, but he's warm and he's all wrapped up in Dean's love she tells him kissing him on the forehead so he scrunches up his face and wipes it off.

When an imp gets to the car it's with a size 0 circular that she stabs him through the eye. Her half finished sweater shoved to the other end, but it still gets covered in goop.

She picks it off rather than give up on the sweater, becaused it's just like one Sam liked in a shop.

Dean starts listening to books on tape on an old walkman Bobby found for her so she doesn't fall behind with her schoolwork. He gives her a bunch of old needles, all kept neat by old elastic bands, at least one of which snaps when she touches it, and balls of wool. She makes him fingerless gloves as thanks, and if he hates that they're turquoise he doesn't say. "Good for fixing cars," he says and smiles at her.

She goes out special the next day and buys more of the wool in black for Dad, for Sam. It takes Sam a week to lose his, and Dad's get torn and he won't let her fix them when he comes back.

When Sam leaves for Stanford she leaves her needles and wool and half finished projects with Bobby, and doesn't take the time to mend socks, just buys new. She doesn't wear gloves or scarves or knits anyway.

Dean shouts for Castiel for at least an hour before he appears, beige trench hanging from him, and he looks tired. She doesnt' say how her heart skips a beat when she sees him. She just reaches into the inside pocket of her coat, her Dad's coat, battered and scuffed and cracked from lack of care, and hands him a package.

Castiel looks at her softly as he unwraps it, revealing a pair of black wool gloves and socks folded on a scarf. "I had some time," Dean says looking at the ground, "I was just killing time, yanno."

"I know," Castiel says softly. "I don't feel the cold," and Dean's too proud to let him see, "but thank you. I will treasure these." And the inference is clear too - because they came from you.


	3. Homecoming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Homecoming

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- _O lyric love_

Amelia Novak is a slap in the face. She's everything Dean isn't, including married to Castiel, well Jimmy, who looks but doesn't see, and she's pretty and has soft hands, and wears just enough make up and Dean wants to hate her. She really does, but Amelia is just a victim, and she has nothing to do with this, but Dean really wants to punch her in the face.

It seriously doesn't help that the first time Dean sees her Dean's slitting a demon's throat.

She's the opposite of everything that Dean is and so when Castiel, no Jimmy, it's Jimmy there, kisses her Dean tries not to vomit, instead she kicks the impala's tires. "Just checking the pressure," she lies to Sam, "give them a moment."

"We're going to have to teach him to hunt," Sam is saying behind her, "so we can eventually leave him behind, keep him safe."

And Dean wants to turn and shake him, to shake him hard, -don't you understand- she wants to say but doesn't, -it doesn't matter, he's not him, he's just- she lowers her eyes back to the tires, to the mud splashes on the side of the car that she'll have to get off, -he's just Jimmy-

And then Amelia goes to drive off with the girl, Dean doesn't want to know her name, because she's a reminder that it's Jimmy in there and not Cas and goddamnit that hurts and - Jimmy just gets in the back of the car, silent as a ghost.

Later, as Jimmy lies dying on the floor of some old warehouse, all stained floor and the stink of oil and dust, as Castiel chases off the last of the demons from them, Dean goes to Jimmy, picking him up so he has something to lean on. "I'm sorry," she says and kisses him, tasting blood on her lips. "It's not even you." She adds, sweeping back his hair, pillowing his back against her knees, "I'm sorry." He's dying and she has only just noticed how he smells exactly the same as Castiel.

And Castiel sees her there, holding Jimmy, as he stands in his new little girl body, in Jimmy's little girl, his cherished daughter, and stops.

He looks at Dean through eyes so like Jimmy's. And Jimmy's begging, pleading, to save his little girl, but Castiel is looking at Dean, at her, and only her, and then he nods and the light takes Jimmy once more.


	4. please love me once more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Please love me ... Once more

Dean Winchester can talk the talk, and is pretty sure she could walk the walk if she ever got the opportunity, but boys don't make passes at girls who kick their asses. And then there's Dad, and Sam, and Bobby, and Pastor Jim, and Caleb... It's hard to sneak off to see a boy when every man she knows is a hunter and perfectly capable of not only killing someone but hiding the body.

Not that boys want to.

She goes through puberty in a slump of wife beaters and plaid shirts like some Seattle rocker, hair buzz cut short, and hands that are capable. If they stop her it's more to ask her to fix their car than because they want to slip their hand into her bra to feel the breasts budding there.

Dean still wants though. Matthew Trachomovitz in Illinois has calves she could sink her teeth into, and he wears slinky little soccer shorts. The other girls notice too, and he notices them, but never Dean, sitting there on the bleachers doing her homework in phys ed because she won't have time when she gets home. She has to feed Sammy, there's laundry to do, mending, and she'll be damned but the day goes quick. She wants to take a run later too, just burn off the steam.

She does that a lot in her teenage years, a coach even mentions that she might want to run cross country for state. She tells him the usual lie, she won't be around, her dad's a travelling salesman, you go where the money is. He pats her on the shoulder and tells her it's a shame.

Dean doesn't care, not really, she never wanted anything but Sam and Dad and if running fast over uneven terrain means she can get away quicker then it's useful. Otherwise she'd find something else to do with her time. If she's lucky she'll be in bed by eleven with Slaughter House 5 which she stole from the school library three hunts back. She hasn't gotten far past page 100.

Dean's first kiss isn't a boy with short hair and soccer calves. It's a girl, and she's sixteen, but looks older, and she wasn't expecting it.

The girl's boyfriend was a dick, and Dean was hustling pool in a pair of too small jeans, lying on the bed with an oof to button them up, fresh from the laundry and making her ass look bigger than it is. She has a high boyish ass, all muscle, but these jeans camouflage that. She's wearing one of Sam's tees that shrunk as well so it clings to her figure and rides up to show her stomach when she's shooting pool.

It's deliberate, and she's drinking ginger beer, though she can hold her liquor like a pro, she scams more money when they mistake her for a normal girl. It helps that she needs a hair cut, so it peeks out from under her knit beret.

The girl, Finch she later introduces herself, is stood in the corner and her boyfriend, the dick, is haranguing her. He's all up in her face and then without caring that anyone is around he puts his hand down the front of her cargo pants. Finch slaps him but he just laughs, so Dean collects his winnings and turns the guy around with a tap on his shoulder and punches him clear in the nose. "She said no, asshole."

Finch follows her out into the carpark. "Thanks," she says, "I'm Finch." Her hair is dyed black apart from one blonde streak at her left temple. Her tee is torn and Dean thinks it might be from the dick in there.

"Dean,"

"For real?"

"For real."

"I owe you a drink, for saving me back there."

"'s nuthin." Dean says and can't help but notice that the girl has bright bright blue eyes and they look at her like she's someone special.

"Let me get you a coffee."

Later, when Finch kisses her, tasting of her hot espresso and icecream milkshake, sweet and bitter and soft, Dean feels cherished. She makes her feel the way that she looks at her.

Dean pulls back. "I'm sorry," she says, "it's not my thing."

And Finch apologises and blushes and apologises again. "I thought,"

And Dean just shakes her head. "Sorry," she says and she thinks she might genuinely mean it. Finch could take her home, could touch more than the back of her shoulders and... Finch could...

Dean fakes the stumble into Castiel so that their lips brush, noticing the smell of him, heavy and settling in her gut, in the vee of her jeans, and then having started it she grabs his head with both hands and kisses him properly and she can see his eyes, bewildered, open, shuttered, diamond cool, and she remembers Finch and moves his hand to her shoulder, praying this will never end.


	5. prayer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Prayer

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean sits perfectly still as the tattooist graves the hebrew inscription on the base of her spine. She has her tee pulled up and tucked into her bra, flannel shirt on her knee, and low hipster jeans. It feels invigorating and nauseating all at the same time.

She's also kind of turned on.

It's her third tattoo and the first that's made her dizzy and nauseous. The first was the anti possession tatt on her left breast. The second is a Mayan protection charm on her right ankle. This third one is a gift from Castiel, matching the inscription on a ring she found on her pillow after a terrible loss.

Her hebrew isn't what it should be but she can read the words _gam zeh yaavor_, and it is both a promise and a threat. It reminds her of him, and as she twists the silver ring, a gift of protection, a sign, on her finger with the pad of her thumb, the tattooist inks its inscription into her skin.

Castiel confuses her. She has never, and knows she will never again, meet anyone like him. He looks at her like she's perfect and he never assumes she's weak because she's a girl and when he speaks, in that low gravel, her knees turn to jelly.

She can feel her desire for him fizzing on her tongue, meaning she finds herself running it over her lips, her top teeth, where she wants to taste him, to know him. If she could she would swallow him whole, consume him and take him within herself so he could never leave.

Castiel promises with his gaze that he will never leave her behind.

Castiel promises, with eyes downcast and hair swept back, that the war will end and they will be happy, that there is a future.

So Dean takes his promise and inks it on her skin with needles and an electric buzzing.

Later when they're alone, Sam out to see his whore, then Dean will call Castiel and show him, and maybe he'll run his fingers over her new tattoo and she'll fell that invigorating, nauseating sensation all over again.

She wants to touch him, to love him, to hold him, but for now there is a war to fight. Later, he promises her with the fold of his lips, slightly open, there will be time to turn their swords into plowshares, but for now we must fight.

Later he promises with inky black eyelashes falling against his cheek in soft bats, when the hardships come I will whisper these words to you, _gam zeh yaavor_ and you will know it for truth.

And so on the tattooist's chair Dean smiles to herself and sighs, before she mouths the words, _gam zeh yaavor,_ this too shall pass.


	6. heads no 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Heads No. 2

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean lilts from the bar, her hand on the wall, pretty sure that someone slipped something in her drink, and canny enough to want OUT, to want Sammy, Castiel, Dad, anyone, but that creep in the hat back at the bar. He had come on too strong, too much, and Dean had just wanted quiet, just for a minute, a beer and some time alone with her thoughts.

She shouldn't have accepted the drink, but it was coffee, and coffee's supposed to be safe - right. The way the world is listing she's pretty sure that's a no.

She just wanted time.

There is a light ahead and although the sidewalk feels like fabric stretched taut and bowing under her feet so she struggles for every step.

Cars screech their horns as she falls past them, missing being hit by the grace of god.

She's glad of the steps because they are hard and unyielding under her hands, and the pain helps centre her, and she moves to the door, the lights on either side, and pushes it open.

It's a church, she can tell, barely through the fog.

She collapses at the door, hoping that here at least she will be safe, and can just wait, wait, wait.

She wakes up on a pew with a man leaning over her, he's sat on the kneeler with a glass of water. The first thing she sees is his white dog collar. The rest of him is indistinct. "Miss, are you alright?"

And within her, loosened by whatever the man put in her drink, the wall shatters. Words pour out of her like salmon rushing upstream, falling over themselves and stuttering, trying again and tumbling from her lips. She doesn't even know what she's saying.

"Is it okay, father," a gravelly voice says behind him, "I'm here to take her home."

And then the tears come, hot and like acid on her cheeks and the priest is kind, he has a tissue which he offers her.

"You came," she says looking at the blue eyes behind her. "I needed you and you came."

He doesn't smile, because he does not do that, but he has a kiss in the corner of his mouth that is just for her and that is what she sees as he says- "Always."


	7. Last movie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Last Movie

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean has what Sam refers to as a loser magnet. As a rule if there is a loser within a hundred yards he will seek her out like a guided missile. The same happens on hunts. Big bads go for Sam, not so big and not particularly bad creeps slaver all over her.

Which is how she finds herself tied to a chair in a white cotton night dress and a blonde wig with a flower sewn to it as a shapeshifter in a rented tuxedo offers her pizza.

The thing is that this isn't even close to being the worst situation she's found herself in. Sure the monster movie kitsch is new and cute, and she's even wearing victorian underwear, which means the freak stripped her, and for that alone he has to die, even if he hadn't killed innocent Oktoberfest visitors.

That she is keeping the clothes for Castiel is entirely moot, of course.

And there's anchovy on the pizza, and not nearly enough garlic. It tastes of salt, fish and very little else. She eats it of course, she's hungry and he's not really going to hurt her, he's just waiting on Sam breaking in so they can start their finale.

She's been given instructions on how to scream and everything. Not that she'll stick to the script. She's had werewolves stick their paws down her panties, vampires stick their faces into her bra, and a particularly nasty djinn putting his fingers where she seriously didn't want them- Had to break them off for that, and stick them up his nose- see how he liked it.

So there's nothing left to do now but wait for her brother, eat the pizza and hope this dress doesn't go see through when the light hits it. It's kinda pretty, she might keep it.

She did better than the barman after all, he's wearing lederhosen.

Sammy is never going to let her live it down, after all he's in his usual Mulder and Scully FBI chic and she's, well, she's the bride of fricking frankenstein.

The loser doesn't even try to talk to her, just holds out the occaisonal slice and expects her to eat. His cardboard scenery smells kinda wet and she's pretty sure that some old man should be tied up as well, just for authenticity.

"Yanno," Dean starts, "I saw this movie, didn't the monster die at the end?"

He looks at her sadly. "Yeah," he says, taking a mouthful of his cherry cola, holding it in his mouth, swallowing loudly before he continues. "But he loved her."

"Did he?" Dean asks, "or did he love the idea of her?"

The vampire doesn't answer her.

"I kinda have someone, yanno," she says, "I have my own Harker."

"The guy at the bar?" The vampire asks, "because I'm going to kill him."

"That's my brother, you douche," Dean answers, fed up of the usual assumptions. "Why does everyone think...?"

"You're gorgeous," the vampire cuts her off, "what man wouldn't want to be with you?"

And Dean doesn't get to answer him because in bursts Sammy to save the day, but even with her hands behind her back she twists the silver ring on her index finger with the pad of her thumb.


	8. Downtime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Downtime

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- _O lyric love_

Menstruation is God's revenge on Eve for stealing the forbidden fruit, which she was canny enough not to eat. It's five days of mess, pain, cravings and bad tempers every month. It's five days of tampons and black panties and alien xenomorphs twisting in her belly and twenty six days of Sam making comments about it being that time of the month.

He never dares when it actually is.

She doesn't think she suffers from PMS, but at the same time you try not to be cranky when everything hurts and you NEED chocolate and your sasquatch brother won't go to the store. She has a hot pack but not every motel has a microwave and she gets cramps so bad that they laugh at midol.

She daren't take anything stronger so that when she gets hurt on a hunt that they actually work because she's not used to them.

So she lies in the bath, and it's too small and the water's not hot enough and has her hair slicked back where it's growing out, and wrapped in a towel to give her a pillow, but the bath is too short to lie down in, even with knees bent, so she's just sat there in a puddle of hot water.

Sam has cut out on her, and the hot chocolate is instant and that's just not good enough and she wants to scream because her stomach hurts so bad. She can't just curl up with the hotpack when she can't heat it, and hot water bottles take up too much room in her pack, and she just wants it to go away.

She's got chipped black nail polish and all she wears is her jewellery, her mother's charm bracelet, a few silver bangles, Castiel's ring, Sam's amulet, and she wants to say she stands up in the bath like Botticelli's Venus but it's more Swamp Thing breaking the surface of the swamp.

She doesn't bother with clothes, just a new tampon and walks into the other room wet and from behind her a figure steps, and around her shoulders wraps a thick warm towel, much nicer than the motel ones. It smells of lavender and lilacs and when she turns around, prepared to strike it's Castiel and the towel is the colour of his eyes.

Her hormones are all over the place, she can't help it, she thinks as she wraps her arms, still wet, around his waist and puts her head on his shoulder, and through the towel his fingers trace the Hebrew symbols on her back. He tugs the white hand towel from her hair with the other hand, smoothing down the strands with thick fingers.

His touch doesn't take away the pain, but she doesn't care about it now, with the fresh smell of the towel, of his shirt, with it's day old smell, and the weight of his arms about her back. Because he knows her, he knows when she needs him, even if it's just to stroke her hair and run his fingers over the ink on her back and remind her that she's not just sore and messy and too hot or too cold, or fat, and bloated with wind because she's menstrual.

When he touches her she feels special and precious and the embarrassment and discomfort are gone.

She's not that teenage girl telling her dad she thinks she has cancer because no one thought to explain periods to her.

She's not the one using both tampons and pads because she didn't know better. She's not the one having to go to the nurse's office in the middle of school because it hurts so damn much.

When he touches her she is beautiful and that's all she ever wanted.

He touches her because she is precious and that's more than enough for both of them.

Later there will be passion- later they will bring the walls of Jericho down with their song; but for now there is war, and there is comfort in touches and towels and the soft whisper of his breath against her drying hair.


	9. love psalm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Love _Psalm_

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- O lyric love

When Sammy presses Dean tells him that Hell was a trip. Once when she was feeling particularly sour she tells him that it was like being on holiday with a bunch of Germans, gives him a wry smile and promptly changes the subject.

Bobby suspects that more goes on behind her eyes than she says but he knows enough to press. So when she tells Bobby that she wants to summon this Castiel that hurt Pam so bad, Bobby calls her for every type of idjit but he agrees to help.

They wire up the barn with every protective sigil either of them can think of, and it's a good job there's that much wall space because otherwise some of them would have had to overlap and that would probably have countered them out.

And then Castiel just walks in like none of these matter at all. He walks through both iron rounds and salt rounds like they're just dust. Two fingers to Bobby's head and Bobby's out for the count, and snoring.

Dean doesn't stop to check on him, before she plunges her knife into the man's chest. He pulls it out and hands it back to her. "Oh, I see, you don't think you deserve to be saved." And that's the moment, Dean knows, not that this thing, this angel, she's not sure on that, is her destiny.

That when those cold blue eyes look at her like she is something worth saving, when he looks through her like she has no armor left and he can see every thought in her head and it's worth listening to.

So, when he appears in her dream a few days later she doesn't question that she's wearing a polka dot dress and an apron, because that's what wives wear, isn't it. She knows her only frame of reference is 50's sitcoms. It starts as Bobby's kitchen and then somewhere along the way becomes Doris Day's.

Castiel makes promises, he makes threats, he tells her of the losses on the field. He confides in her which makes her feel that this might be forever. She's never had a crush before. But when she offers him lemonade, not that she knows where it comes from, which is one of the advantages of dreams, his fingers linger against hers.

It's amazing the way that the air crackles between them, he will catch her eyes and then drop them, with a tiny smile.

It's how she knows that maybe Hell was a trip, but it was worth it - for this.


	10. Ordinary Vanity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Ordinary Vanity

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean rolls over into the bed and against Castiel, and she might be dreaming, she might not, it doesn't matter, because his legs are twined through hers and his arm is over her waist, his nose buried in her hair.

They could be naked for all Dean cares because they're naked where it counts, his forearm, his chest, their legs, her waist. Everything else is still asleep. The sheet is scratchy clean, starched rigid and the blanket is a heavy sweltering heat over them.

Castiel smells wonderful.

He always smells like he is on the verge of needing a shower, because he took his vessel at the end of the work day, so the smells that linger on him are the vessel's. But he smells warm, faintly musky, lingering fragrance of fabric conditioner and coconut shampoo at the back of his neck and behind his ears.

The vessel's skin is sticky hot with sweat, and Dean wants to curl into him, but if she moves, if she does more than hook her leg over his, he might move, he might pull away. If she raises her head she'll wake him.

And Dean is sweaty sticky too, there are folds in her skin that feel positively tropical, she doesn't want as much as need a shower, and although she brushed her teeth before crashing out she knows perfectly well that those strip beef fajitas will have come back with a vengeance and breath that could wilt plants.

She doesn't want him to wake up when she's hot and sweaty, when she needs to brush her teeth and pee. And Sam's in the other bed snoring like a chainsaw on a rope pull.

To make matters worse the song "ding dong the witch is dead" is running through her head. She's woken up, maybe, in bed with the man-angel-man she loves and she needs to shower and wants to break into a verse of "_Ding Dong' the merry-oh, sing it high, sing it low. Let them know, The Wicked Witch is dead!_"

Above her head Castiel chuckles, trailing his knuckles along her flank and down over the curve of her hip, fingertips idly playing with the elastic of her panties. Of course Castiel is awake, and he doesn't care that she smells, that her breath is actually epic and tilts her head up and softly leans his lips against hers.

She wants to melt into the kiss but between choruses of munchkins singing "As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead," and she's pretty sure she could run her fingers through the sweat in her armpits, and she can still taste the chili from last night's supper and...

Castiel doesn't care. She knows that, she knows that no matter what she appears she is beautiful to him. She'd like to lie here with him forever, but she really needs to pee.


	11. The Real Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: The Real Love

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean has lived in the shadow of her baby brother for as long as she can remember. She can find him in a room by scent and it doesn't take stinky sports socks anymore. She knows which cheap aftershave he prefers, and has been known to steal his jeans, and tees, rolling them up at the ankles to accomodate her, because although she's not short, he's a freaking sasquatch. If she could she'd steal his shoes too.

She knows what he will and won't eat and it hasn't bothered her in years when he walks in on her in the shower, or on the toilet to use the bathroom sink. She pretends not to listen if he jerks off in the bed, and is the one who taught him the etiquette of things hung on the door, including the Do Not Disturb sign.

So she just buries her head in Castiel's shoulder, getting a faceful of white cotton as Sam bursts in on them. She was pretty sure she was explicit before he left the room the first time. So if he's mentally scarred by walking in on her in just her jeans and bra, straddling Castiel's lap, it's entirely his own fault.

Sex is a beautiful, natural thing and Castiel's only lost his trench, suit jacket and tie, so it's not like either of them are naked, and his fingers are threaded through the belt loops of her jeans. "Get a room!" Sam says going to his duffle.

Dean laughs, turning her head but not moving, even if Castiel would let her. "We had one, go on, get." she waves her hand at him.

Castiel growls before he starts to nip at her neck. "Sammy, still here?" Dean asks, the fingers of her left hand twisting up through Castiel's hair. Her right hand waving at her brother.

"Dude," Sam protests, "that's my sister!"

"Oh, like this is X-rated." Dean snarks, then reaches around and undoes her bra, "now this for example, is closer."

"It's raining!" Sam protests.

"There's a kung fu triple on somewhere." Dean says and slips the bra from her shoulders, hoping Sam will take the hint, Castiel certainly has, burying her against his chest so Sam can see nothing.. "For gods sake, take the car, find a library, a froufy coffee shop, somewhere with WiFi. Just get!"

"So I can find the anti-viagra for angels?" Sam stutters, flopping down on the other bed, "Dude, put on a shirt. I'm not leaving until you stop that. That's my sister! It's just wrong!"

Dean doesn't answer him, she just kisses Castiel, trying to suck his tongue into her mouth and his hands are on her bare shoulderblades.

"Oh for god's sake!" Sam says finally standing up. "I hope you're going to pay for my therapy, buddy." He tells Castiel, "and if she wasn't perfectly capable of cutting off your balls herself, if you hurt her..." Dean flaps her hand at him, pretending to listen as Castiel chuckles into her mouth.

When the door slams behind him, Dean stands up, lips swollen, licking the taste of Castiel from her lips as she pulls on her bra again. "You know," she tells the angel sitting on the bed, "that really never gets old."


	12. Moonchild

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Moonchild

Castiel is patient, and the conversation awkward. Dean fusses with her cup of hot chocolate, napkins and doesn't want to meet his eyes. It's a simple Mom and Pop diner and there's a kid at another table extolling loudly the virtue of booberries with her pancakes. She looks like a little doll.

"Sam says he's going to kill you." Dean says quietly, "he's out for your head. And he wants to tell Bobby."

"I see," Castiel says quietly.

"I, I just," Dean wants to say something, "and, I," the words are gone, and Castiel doesn't know what to say. For a man who can say everything in a purse of his lips he remains perfectly silent. "I'm so sorry." And then the tears come, and she has to stop, she has to remember how to breathe, "and Sam," her voice is hitching.

"Dean," Castiel says, and reaches out to touch her hand, making her let go of the cup. "Never apologise to me, for what you are, for who you are, for you are..."

"Please," she says. "Just, don't please." She still can't meet his eyes. "I," she sniffed, "I," she presses her lips together. "I wanted."

"I know, but we will," he says, and rubs the pad of his thumb over the back of her hand. "You have not failed, love," he says, "it just wasn't time."

She takes her free hand from her lap and wipes angrily at her face, at the tears there with the side of her hand. "I," she says, snuffling back snot and saliva. "Sam really wants to kill you."

"I promised him I would never hurt you." He wipes away the tears from her cheeks, cups her jaw with his palm. "Perhaps I should let him hurt me, a little, for hurting you."

She takes his hand in hers and kisses it. "Never you," she said. "I let you down."

"No, love," Castiel repeats, using the word as a salve, as a title, as a reminder of how much she means to him, even if sometimes he finds it hard to say that. He rarely uses the word so when he does it means everything to her. "Never you, my love." She is clutching his hand so tight that if he was human it would hurt, but he does not flinch or pull away.

"It just wasn't time." He tells her. "Later, when we have stopped mourning, when the war is gone, then there will be time, there will be eternity, and between us there will never be failure. There will be love and if Sam wants to hurt me, I might even let him." Dean offers him a wan smile. "But Bobby, I won't have to let."


	13. Battle Drums

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic: Battle Drums

Dean likes the sawn off shotgun because it has less recoil and doesn't feel as much of a substitute penis as say the Magnum or the colt. She likes knives because it means she can see the whites of the creature's eyes when she kills them, and they can see it's a girl doing it.

They always scoff when they see her, because she's a girl, and then come the jokes, the Xena Warrior Princess asides, and the laugh that they were sure that the infamous Dean Winchester was a boy, and they always look so surprised when she puts the knife through their throats, or into their chests.

Castiel tells her that she will save the world. He tells her she will do it because she is Dean, not because she is a hunter, not because she is a woman, but because she is Dean and that hurts.

Dean knows she's not good enough for this. But still she stands at the front lines, shot gun against her arm, loaded with silver and salt, knives in the sleeve of her boot, one at the back of her neck in a custom rig.

She stands tall and hopes the bravado will be enough to carry her through, and she knows a secret that CAstiel does not when he looks at her like she is worthy, that she'll let them down - not because she's a woman, not because she's a hunter, because she's Dean Winchester and Heaven help her it's not enough.

But when Castiel looks at her, so devout and believing she wants to be worth it, god help her, she wants to be the person he thinks she is.

She knows she's not however, and that is why she promises again and again, with fingers on the back on his hands, soft breaths against his jaw and knees touching knees under diner tables, that she will take as many of the sons of bitches down with her as she can when she goes.

She lies with the fold of her sweater, creased over her stomach. She lies with the line of dirt under her black fingernails. She lies with the fall of tawny hair over her forehead. She lies when she tells him she believes she can save the world. She lies when she chews her nails, the lacquer flaking. She lies when she presses her lips together. But when she stares at him, when she finds him with her eyes, then she can't lie, but she doesn't tell him what he wants to hear.


	14. Dreams of leaving

Dean tries to leave hunting when Sam leaves, when Dad leaves, when there is nothing else. It's a simple hunt, a find the remains of a cremated ghost and salt and burn. She doesn't quite have the strength on her own to dig out a grave and fill it in before dawn. So she burns dolls and hair and hatpins and gloves and whatever it is that the ghost is haunting.

She trudges back to the motel, tired, covered in grave dust and lichen, and walks past the go-go bar and sees the advert. It's nothing she can't do, it's real money, and they don't ask questions. It's not a titty bar, it's slightly higher class because it's in a slightly better town than would have that, so she showers, slicks back her hair, pulls on her tee and a pair of heavy boots and applies.

She gets the job, gets her own slots three times a night, five days a week. Her theme, if she can call it that, is Indiana Jones, because she can flip, because she can fight, because she has scars. But she's young, clean and doesn't have a pimp and that's more than most of the girls have going for them.

She stays there for six months, flashing white panties and bra for $300 a night with tips, but she lives in the motel because the alternative is a real life and she doesnt know how to do that. She has ramen for most meals not because she can't cook, because she can, of a sort, but because it would mean permanence, it would mean she'd be here forever.

She picks up extra shifts, not because she needs the money but because there's nothing else to do. She learns the witch routine, the naughty nurse, but she gets her money from hanging upside down from the pole as she opens her shirt.

It's nothing, it's not hunting, it's just something in between, and when she dances, she imagines that's the word, it's the one that the others use, she sees a pair of cold blue eyes watching her like she's the only thing in the world. So she dances for him. She strips for him.

She calls herself Diana because it's the last remnant of who she was, before the pole dancer, before the person she is now, Diana, the huntress. Her stage name is Artemis and people come specifically just to watch her.

When Bobby stands at the bar she doesn't even blink, she walks out on to the stage with her whip and she gives them a show. She's still wearing the protective jewellery and when the blue eyes catch her, as they always do, it's Bobby she finds.

Part of her wants to pull the shirt over herself and run, because it's Bobby! But the money is really good and it's not like she can do anything else, she's just Dean, a hunter because that's what her dad was, because that's what he wanted her to be. She's Diana, a pole dancer because it was there and the money was good.

He meets her by her car, she wouldn't change the Impala for the world, it's the only thing that never left. "If you didn't want to be found, kid," he says, and offers her a bottle of ginger beer, lid open, "you didn't do a very good job of hiding."

She doesn't answer him. "Got a job for you," he continues, "simple thing, just got me a truckload of old books from a collector, need some help cataloguing, and translating them. Money'll be shit but I'll give you bed and board." She looks down at her Dad's jacket and wonders why she should say no, why she should say I have a sort of life here, I kinda have friends. I have a job, an honest job, but it's not that, it's just filler, it's just something else to leave behind.

"I'll drive out tomorrow," she says quietly. "Otherwise you'll just kill yourself falling from some fool ladder."

Bobby nods. "Sure thing, kid, but if you want out, there are other options, yanno, than working in some cheap titty bar."

"I aint cheap," she says, her bravado restored, "and I can't see myself surrounded by books."

"I know, kid, but you're a hunter, you would have come back."

"Did you see me, Bobby, did you see me dance? I was good, dammit, I was good at something other than hunting." There's rage but it doesn't matter because she didn't really feel anything anyway. She danced because those blue eyes she dreamt of she imagined watching her, and it's not like they were there anyway.


	15. Only you

As a teenager Dean pretty much lived out of one backpack, which held things like a tardis, and Bobby's back bedroom. Dad didn't even notice that Dean might need some space on her own, but Bobby puts it aside for her pretty much the first time they meet.

It's not much, Dean knows, but it's hers. There is an old military cot with a thin mattress that smells kinda damp and of cats, no matter how it's aired, a thin quilted coverlet with bright yellow flowers that smells musty and of antiseptic lavender. There's an old vanity with a broken leg that's held up by old phone books, and has a small empty vase on it that Dean uses for her needles.

The room's not much bigger than a cupboard, it's a box room, but it's hers and that's all that matters. So when, for her fifteenth birthday, Bobby goes into his attic and brings down a floor length mirror she is elated, but passes it off as disinterest, the way she did with the chair and the rug before them. But Bobby mentions that it's just gathering dust, it aint worth nothing, but a girl could do with a mirror.

It's nothing fancy, just a full lenth mirror on a swivel stand. It means a lot to Bobby, she can tell by how bashful he is, and how he doesn't want to look at it.

She knows it's from the time before.

She lies in her bed, wrapped up in her coverlet which is a double although it's just a small cot, with her cat smelling pillow, and one with a cover she knit herself, and sleeps facing the mirror.

The next morning she suggests to Bobby that it might be haunted. She tells him that she was convinced that there was someone watching her, she could have sworn she saw blue eyes, but they're not nasty, she's keen to point out, they're just there.

EMF shows nothing.

Holy water has no reaction.

Bobby chalks a few sigils on the back, just in case, but Dean knows it doesn't matter, whatever it is isn't shifting. It's not nasty, it's just there, and Bobby won't break the mirror.

Eventually she comes to want it watching her, it's never malicious. She drives across America with Dad and finds herself looking in mirror for those blue eyes, and then she comes back to Dakota, to that simple wooden mirror, and feels loved, and wanted and needed and so when she parts her legs, when she touches herself, she makes sure that the mirror can see.


	16. This sacred line

The first time Dean sleeps with Castiel, it's almost accidental. She is angry at Sam, who whines almost constantly about the fact that she's banging a heavenly whore, even though she's not, and they haven't even progressed to heavy petting. And then he sees Uriel and for some reason thinks that he's Castiel because it's the first angel he sees.

And if he hasn't been a whiny little bitch for weeks anyway, because he thinks he should have been the one to save her from Hell, and Uriel grates on his last nerve, and Ruby has a wooden spoon the size of Arkansas for stirring things up between them.

And Dean finds herself defending Castiel, who has never been anything other than everything to her, and Uriel who is a dick. So of course Sammy sees all angels as dicks, especially that creep whose fucking his sister.

Dean doesn't even contradict him when the most she and Castiel have shared is a kiss and lots of lingering looks. And of course Sam's acting like he's been insulted and doesn't even bother to ask her her opinion, like she doesn't matter and that's it, she's pissed so she grits her teeth and works the case, watching Sam do that messed up demon shit.

And Castiel listens when she talks, pacing back and forth in the park at night. Then she sits down beside him and he laces his fingers through hers and she feels warm, because it's the first comfort she's had in days, what with Sam whining all the god damn time.

He listens and that is worth more than Sam constantly yammering away about nothing, because he won't admit to himself that he might have failed, because someone else saved Dean from Hell.

She leans her head against Castiel's shoulder, and when he turns to her, perhaps to say something, they kiss, and it's like a fire ignited between them. The kiss is born of rage and pain and futility and before she knows what's happening her jeans are around her knees and he's inside her, and she's put his hand inside her shirt, up under her bra, cupping her breast and rubbing through the delicious slip slide of him inside her.

She doesn't know where it came from, she just doesn't want it to end.

There on the park bench, in front of the kid's playground where he told her how he admitted to her how he questioned his faith. And he picks her up, sets her down on his cock facing away, with both hands on her breasts and his mouth stealing sloppy kisses from the side of her mouth as she literally bounces on him.

Sex doesn't really do much for her usually but when Castiel hitches up her knees, tied up by her jeans to change the angle within her...

It feels like love, she thinks, and it makes it even hotter. She is being fucked, it's not making love because it's primal, it's outside and he moves one hand to her thigh, and she leans forward to change the angle within her.

When she comes he does right after, obviously triggered by her orgasm. He lays his face against the back of her neck and whispers promises of love to her in a language she doesn't understand. And she's glad, she's glad because the tension between her and Castiel might be more manageable now, she might be able to think. And so what if she goes back to the motel room covered in sweat stink and hickies, Sam thought it was true anyway.


	17. Hole in the sky

Dean Winchester dreams of Hell. It is split into two distinct visions, one is of her at Alistair's rack, knife quick and shining, in the other, she is alone in a subterranean cathedral that goes on for miles. She's not sure which terrifies her more.

In the cathedral there are many stands, each displaying a piece of armour, a weapon, a book. She knows that each one of them is capable of destroying the world and they are hers and she is theirs.

In the dream she has taken up stewardship as a reward for saving the world.

In the dream both Castiel and Sam are dead.

Sometimes the whimpering screams are easier to bear than that terrible aching emptiness.

She wakes up, still wearing her jeans, her boots toed off, and a vest over her bra, scratching at her stomach with chipped black nails. In their small motel bathroom she considers throwing up, just to get the taste of dust from her mouth.

Castiel is sat on the toilet, with the lid down, his trench draped over the side of the bath. "What if I needed to pee?" she asks, too weary to just accept comfort. She's scared and volatile so all her defences are ready for attack.

"I'd sit on the bath and wait. Sam doesn't like me." Castiel answers calmly. He stares at her like she means something, like she's worth such devotion and it makes her skin crawl. She wants to shower, to wash the underground cathedral from her skin.

"I'm not," she says waving her hands, "you wanna leave, I think you're not here as a heavenly post-it right."

"I am here because you wanted me here," he answers, "and to give you this." He holds out his hand and shows her a simple cheap silver ring with an engraving. It looks very very old.

She doesn't reach out to it.

"When Solomon wanted to embarrass his senior minister he made of him a request," Castiel says in that low deep voice of his, "he asked him to find a magic ring, a ring that would sway the hearts of men. When he asked what magic this ring had Solomon told his minister it had the power to make the sad happy and the happy sad."

Dean picks up her toothbrush and starts to run the tap but Castiel knows she's wearing her armour, he knows she's listening through the helm he cannot see.

"So the minister travelled the world looking for the ring, but as the deadline loomed he found an old goldsmith who had his wares spread out on a blanket, with nothing left to lose he asked the goldsmith if he knew of this wondrous ring."

Dean is watching him through the mirror, at how patient and still he sits, perched on a toilet seat lid.

"The goldsmith laughed and went to his blanket and lifted a plain silver ring, and with his hammer he engraved three symbols. Looking at the symbols the minister understood and took it to Solomon who was chastened when he saw it and read the words written there _gam zeh yaavor_ and had to accept it. This is that ring."

"I don't want it." Dean replies, "I don't do jewellery, I've got what I need." She refers to the bone bracelet, her mother's charm bracelet, and Sam's amulet. She sees the ring on it's pillow in that empty underground cathedral.

He nods, slowly and when she looks back he's gone.

She wakes up with the ring on her pillow, and puts it on, to give it back to him, but it's priceless, she doesn't want to lose it.


	18. Wrong is right

When Dean is six her father is called to the school about her behaviour, but John's on a hunt and it falls on Pastor Jim to pretend. He comes in with Sammy in the pushchair because he's too small to leave behind and he can't find a sitter at such short notice. As the teacher, the excerable Miss Dorer, who an adult Dean can still rant about, at length, explains to him that Dean is one hair away from being expelled for biting her.

Dean is sat in a small plastic chair wearing a good will jumper advertising coca cola on the pocket and bright pink tennis shoes. If looks could kill, Pastor Jim thinks, Dean Winchester would need a licence for that scowl.

Miss Dorer is explaining, at length, through her nose, that Dean is a terrible child, that although she obviously has plenty of promise she doesn't do her work, and picks fights with the other children. She refuses to say the pledge of allegiance and she has a mouth on her like a sewer.

Pastor Jim just nods, thinking how different this is from the solicitous child that he looks after outside of school.

"And she threw a bible at me, Mr Winchester, a bible!" She makes it sound like it matters, "she was having a tantrum and when I explained to her that it was a good thing her mother was dead so as not to see this behaviour she bit me, look." There is a small impression of teeth on her arm.

"Well, Miss Dorer," Pastor Jim says, "actually Dean, will you take your brother outside?"

"And that name," the woman continues, "what kind of a name is Dean for a girl. I suppose her brother is called Mary."

Pastor Jim is not given to bad tempers and Dean wheels her brother outside, playing peek a boo with him outside in the corridor she hears Pastor Jim raise his voice at the woman.

Miss Dorer has run this school for years and is used to getting her own way but it seems Pastor Jim has no idea of letting that continue when it comes to his charge.

In the car, on the way home, when she's sat next to Sammy's big leather booster seat, making the bear dance she waits for the scolding she knows she's going to get. He's going to have to tell her Dad afterall.

"Dean," he says, as he puts Sammy in his pushchair, and offers her his hand, "I would have bitten her too." He squeezes her hand, "she is a horrible woman, and we'll find you a nicer school, okay, your Dad will understand."

And the tears erupt from nowhere. Snuffling and wiping her face with her free hand, "she said she was glad my Mommy was dead," Dean manages, "she said I was a little demon and I was going to hell, and that..."

Pastor Jim crouches down in front of her. "You're a good girl, Dean, a really good girl, and if she doesn't realise that then she's just a closeminded old witch." Sammy is waving his arms back and forth, telling Dean something in his nonsense language of his own, and she can hear Dee, which is the best he can do with her name. He takes a tissue from his pocket, it's been well used but Dean doesn't care as he wipes her face. "And do you know why your Mommy called you Dean, why of all the names in the world she called you that?"

Dean shakes her head.

"Her Mommy was called Deanna," he says, John told him that once, not that he knew Mary's parents, "and you were going to be called that, but when they told you, you screwed up your face and the only name that you liked was Dean, so that's what your name is, it's a great name for a girl, no matter what that old bat says. There are angels watching over you, remember that, Dean Winchester, and your Mommy is there making sure that they do."

And for the rest of her life as Dean goes through the, really, no really, dance with her name, she doesn't remember Pastor Jim telling her that, but she knows her name is special, afterall her Mom gave her it.


	19. Mr Jones

"Believe in me 'cause I don't believe in anything

and I, I want to be someone to believe, to believe, to believe,yeah,"

Dean dances although she doesn't know the song. She has her arms above her head, rocking to the beat and the rhythm played on a cloud grey guitar. She dances because the music moves her. She dances because otherwise it will move her to tears.

She dances and imagines that everyone in the room loves her. That when she moves, when she swings her hips everyone in the room watches and she will never be lonely. That when her thighs brush together people will believe in her.

Castiel stands at the bar, or maybe not him, maybe it was never him, maybe it's just a blue eyed man, or perhaps he's the man on the guitar, the man singing, perhaps he's the fool who thinks she's dancing with him.

When she dances she's beautiful.

Sam is trading on it, using the image of her, the way he looks at her, to distract the man he's hustling at pool.

She wonders if he sees the tattoo at the base of her spine; the hickies at the back of her neck. She wonders if the jock he's playing pool with, young and inexperienced and arrogantly stupid, is watching the rise and fall of her buttocks or the folded valleys of her armpits and knows she is beautiful.

The man on the gray guitar winks at and she just swings her hair, a million soft tawny whips over her forehead, cheek and chin, down the back of her neck.

Her jewellery batting down the meat of her arm, her mother's bracelet, the bone bracelet she got from an old santoria witch, a leather thong embossed with protective symbols that covers her tattoo. She dances and she's not alone, everyone loves her, and she will never be lonely. As she dances she could take home every man in this bar, but she will never take any of them, because maybe the man at the bar is Castiel, maybe he's not - it doesn't matter.

He's told her what it means, the words strange and unfamiliar, joy is in the ears that hear, and this is joy, she thinks as she swings, as she dips, as she dances, these are the ears that hear.

This is her prayer and the way that they watch her, maybe they believe in her.

Maybe she's some ancient goddess wearing beads of lapis and a skirt of fire, dancing to charm the underworld and scare away the night.

Maybe she's a huntress in the furs of her kills, stamping her feet to summon the moon.

Maybe she's a priestess singing her ululations to the growing dark.

Maybe she's beautiful.

Maybe she's worth watching.

Instead she's Dean Winchester and she dances because the alternative is worse.

When everyone loves me, the man sings in his soft baritone, that's just as fucked up as you can be. And that's when Dean smiles, because of it all, that much is true.


	20. Magdalene

Anna Milton is a dupe, Tokyo stuck between Mothra and Godzilla, and her heart is breaking, just like Dean's.

the two of them sit on the hood of the impala, trading a can of ginger beer between them and telling stories. "He doesn't feel" Anna says, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand, "not like we feel, it's like, well, it's not right." She looks at Dean, "it's not that he doesn't love, it's just he doesn't know what it's like for us. He's like a blow up doll, and there's part of him that feels, but it's not much."

At least Anna has the decency to act rueful as she tears Dean apart. "He can't appreciate chocolate, or hot coffee, or making love."

"No," Dean asks, thinking of the heat of Castiel as he slips and slides within her.

"Not like we do," she says. "They're going to kill me, aren't they?" Anna asks. "And they won't even regret it."

And Dean wonders if that's true, but Anna was an angel, she fell to feel.

Then Anna is kissing her, her mouth tasting of ginger and salt and her hand on Dean's cheek. And Dean is shattering under her touch and Anna's hands' porcelain white and perfect are holding her together, so when they reach up under her tee, sculpted fingertips pulling back the functional black fabric of her bra to flick at a tight nipple Dean just accepts.

Dean's slept with girls before, but this isn't about sex, it's about pity and regret and giving Anna what she wants, there on the hood of the Impala, with kisses that taste of ginger and spicy sweet. She undoes the button of her own jeans to give Anna access.

This has nothing to do with Castiel. This has nothing to do with Dean. This is about Anna. This is about Anna's hands holding Dean together.

Anna's panties are lacy, scratchy against the back of Dean's fingers, her bracelets catching on the zipper of her jeans as she rubs her fingers, with their black nails, back and forth, without even pulling the pants down.

Anna's hands are clumsy, her fingers long and not quite sure what to do as Dean rocks into her knitted together fingers, her body having it's own agenda, but in her head Dean sees Castiel watching them, and Anna's wrong, he does feel. He feels everything, just that much more keenly.

Anna comes with a grunt into Dean's mouth and Dean just rocks her through the final spasms, her fingers slick and hot and Anna's awkward touch between the lips of her own sex and the emblazoned image of Castiel watching them, and Dean barely manages an orgasm, what she'd refer to as a crotch sneeze, but it's enough for Anna, who kisses her neck sloppily, and then, pulling out her hand, still wet from Dean's cunt, she leads her to the back seat of the car.

Dean can do this. She's done this hundreds of times, she tells herself. It's just sex, she tells herself. It's just flesh meeting flesh because they can feel. It's just a quick, painless, moment of human kindness.


	21. Your rain

At first the week Dean spends as psychic aged thirteen she attributes to the magic book that landed on her head and earned her seven stitches in her scalp and a mild skull fracture.

She sleeps through the drugs and the migraine the first day so no one notices, least of all Dean.

Then her Dad comes in to check on her in the night and she gets this welter, this overwhelming rush of images of love and fear and you look just like your mother, MARYMARYMARYHUNTFINDKILL my little girl, my little girl, love you, love you so much, get so scared of/for you, find it, find it and kill it, save you, save you and Sam, save you, for Mary MARYMARYMARYHUNTFINDKILL. And Dean just looks at him because she doesn't know what to say, so she says nothing.

Bobby's thoughts the next morning as he asks her how she is are just as confused, damn-fool-girl, get yourself killed, it'll be my fault, damn ladder, told ya it wasn't safe, god you're getting pretty, girl needs a mirror, icecream, I'll get in some icecream, and make pancakes, what goes in pancakes again, you and your brother will like them, damn-fool-girl, can't even get a book down without trying to kill yourself. It's so gentle and Bobby she laughs and before he says a word tells him with her biggest shit eating grin that yes, she will have pancakes thank you.

Sam is sat in front of the tv, cross legged on the floor, old reruns of the animated Star Trek on and a book on his knee and managing both happily, and his head is full of the wide open planes of space, great vastnesses between stars and the math, he is perfectly serene, working out the logistics of both the Ringworld and warp speed at the same time, and Dean will know, because she knows everything, with a running undercurrent of how much he enjoyed his golden nuggets cereal.

When she tells Bobby he calls her a damn fool and finds the place where she stumbled, with blood on her hands, and activated the spell.

She floats around on a cloud for a week afterwards when it stops, because for one week she knew perfectly well that she was loved.


	22. I want to know love is real

Sometimes Castiel makes no sense to Dean. She can read his looks, the way he holds his hands, the slight purse of his lips but his words they are meaningless. They speak different languages with their voices.

"Laughter is god's gift," he tells her with his soft deep voice, the private voice, the one he keeps for when they're alone. "Given to lift the spirits and dispel evil, but evil took it and twisted it so it became a two edged sword."

"Shut up and kiss me," she says instead.

So he does.

He tastes of the sea, infinite, dangerous, terrible, divine. He smells like a man on the verge of needing a shower, of cheap fabric conditioner almost faded to nothing and the lingering of someone else's aftershave. His finger tips are almost rough against her skin but his mouth, and his laughter, are as soft as her hair, grown out for him this past year.

She could drown in him, but he won't let her.

They lie in her motel bed, the sheets rucked around their waists, her breasts falling unto his chest and her panties at the bottom of the bed in a tangle of black cotton. His cock sleeping against her thigh. His fingers are softly toying with the strands of longish hair at the side of her face and her arm is draped over his chest.

This is love, she thinks but dares not say, the way we lie, snatched moments between absences and hunts.

This is love, she thinks, but dares not say, the way he looks at me, like I am something worth saving.

This is love, she thinks, but dares not say, the way he makes me feel so much that I think I'm going to be sick.

And he says nothing either, just stares at her with that unflinching gaze, the one that sees through her and finds her worthy. And that, she knows, is love, and love, she knows, is blind.


	23. fraternity

Sam doesn't like Castiel. Dean wonders if it's an actual reaction, his demon blood reacting to it's natural enemy, or jealousy that someone else is close to his sister.

Sex has been a past time for Dean for a long time, since one day she woke up and realised she was pretty and she could use it. Since that day when she realised that the loss inside her made her haunting. She can command a room when she moves and has for years filled the emptiness inside her with meaningless worship. She was a goddess, she thinks, of hunting. She hunted and she consumed.

And Sam is jealous of Castiel.

Sam has never looked at her like that. She's his sister and their very proximity means the very idea is repugnant. She's washed his underpants and his sweaty socks long enough to know that the girl that gets Sammy is both blessed and cursed. For she has trained him to be mostly considerate to women, and whoever it is she will be worshipped as she should be, but the socks...

Castiel doesn't worship. He loves.

And Sam is being a dick, walking back and forth across the room telling her all the reasons why this affair of hers is a bad idea, and how angels can't be trusted any more than demons, like he's not sticking it where it doesn't belong, and Dean knows- knows - that it's nothing to do with him, it's nothing to do with her, it's the threat that he might lose her.

All of his life Sam has known that Dean was there, that she would do and has done anything for him. No matter what Sam does, or will do, Dean will be there and love him. Mother, sister, teacher, goddess, friend and protector. Sam has always had her green eyes watching him.

What Sam doesn't know is how Dean has always been watched by a pair of sad blue eyes.

"And what if you get knocked up?" Sam says and Dean laughs because she and Castiel haven't so much as kissed. There are looks and his fingers linger against hers when he passes her something, and he stands at her back when she fights.

Dean grins, her biggest shit eating grin, the one she knows has power. "Well, then, Sammy," she tells him, "you get to be an uncle."

She doesn't tell him that Castiel would need some pretty big shoes to take Sam's place. And there's enough of her that Castiel can watch her back whilst Sam stands to her side.


	24. Turning States into the Sea

Dean is alone when Castiel appears. She has done her best to drive Sam out by wandering around in panties and a wife beater. He didn't really need the excuse to go.

She's restless, tired, buzzed, angry and miserable all at once.

Castiel appears between one blink at the next, never with any fanfare, just one minute he is there where he wasn't before. He has one wing outstretched awkwardly and it is covered in some thick black goop and the remnants of gore, as if someone incompetently tried to pick it out.

He stumbles, falling to his knees, unhurt but for the twisted wing, but the look on his face is one of apocalypse.

Dean wants to comfort him, to press his face between her breasts, to stroke his short dark hair, but then he speaks. "She saved me," he says and his voice is horrified, honoured, shocked and blown all in one. "She saved me."

Dean goes to the bathroom adjoining their cheap motel room. She fills a small basin with hot water and adds a palmful of Sam's expensive shampoo, then lifts her toothbrush. She can clean his wings, she thinks, even if she's no longer the one he wants.

She hasn't seen him in weeks, and he appears talking about _her_.

She kneels behind him, because he appears stuck there.

She lowers her head and dipping her toothbrush into the soapy water she begins to clean his wings.

If he was human she'd say it was shock, but Castiel is not human.

There are places where the feathers are missing, as if some great fist had torn them asunder. There is blood and strings of sinew in his hair.

"She's gone," Castiel says and if he was human he would cry, but Castiel is not human.

Dean bites her lip and starts to scrub with the toothbrush, trying to get the worst of the sticky black tar from his wings.

"She chose me," Castiel says and his voice is cracked wide open. "She was the one who heard my voice and cradled me under her breast until i had life, and she sent me here."

Dean blinks, biting back a tear that she wants to wipe away on his wings. "She was your mother," she says and hates herself for saying it, for being jealous, for caring this damn much. "Of course you loved her."

Castiel says nothing, he just kneels there on the hard motel floor as she uses her own toothbrush to clean the feathers of his broken wing.


	25. the garden of unearthly delights

Dean couldn't tell you what Hell is. It's different for everyone, it changes constantly. It lurks around the edges of her vision, she can smell it faintly in the wind, taste it in the food she has no interest in. She has seen it in the faces of the people she talks to, a momentary variation of horror. She has heard it in the static on the radio, laughing at her, calling her home.

The voices, the smells, the sights, the tastes, they all have one thing in common. They can't understand why she'd wanted to leave.

Afterall Hell has some singular pleasures.

The irony is she isn't sure she wanted to.

When she eats she remembers the unique delight of sitting at a table as nameless figures flayed the meat off her back, careful of the muscles she needed to lift her arms.

When she sleeps she remembers lying in beds made of corpses, rotten and slimy as wave after wave of unrelenting orgasm crashed over her with the inevitability of the sea.

When she showers she remembers the rains of acid that stripped the skin from muscle and sinew and left her exposed and raw.

When she looks in the mirror she sees the slow decay of her face.

When she sees Sammy she sees horrors the likes of which he cannot comprehend and in the heart of the morbidity a single flower that blossoms only at night and whose smell could drive you mad.

She drinks, wanting to feel the slow dissolution of her liver, the way the vinegary cheap whiskey burns and scalds like she were drinking liquid oxygen. She scrapes broken nails over the skin of her thighs, trying to recreate those feelings. She remembers the languid joy of having her hands in someone else's intestines as they fucked her, bleeding out on some rock, the pain as important as the pleasure.

She chews the inside of her lips.

She cuts her toenails to the quick for the delicious sliver of pain.

She pierces her ears and then lets the holes heal to do it all over again.

She misses it, and that is devouring her alive, and there is no pleasure in the pain, only anguish and misery and it is a waste. She doesn't want to hurt; she wants to soar.

So when they ask her about Hell Dean is evasive, she sips her scalding hot black coffee and worries the ulcers on the inside of her lips. "It's a trip." She says finally, and hopes that they can't tell from her eyes that she _needs_ to go back.


	26. Holocaust

Dean copes. It's what she does. It's what she's always done. There'll be time soon enough to weep and wail and rant and rage, but for now, she copes. She wants to scream. She wants to throw up. Instead she makes do.

Sam sits on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands taking long deep, measured breaths. She wants to hit him, to strike him, to throw up at him, to rail at him. Cas is dead she wants to scream, Cas sacrificed himself so I could save you and you just let it happen. The one person who loved me regardless died for you, died so I could save you, and you didn't want to be saved.

She just flicks channels on the news and thinks of the things she wants to say. She wants to tell him to get over it, to get down off his cross because there's better things to do with the wood. She wants to congratulate him because his self inflicted crown of thorns is holding back his hair for once.

So he feels sorry for himself for kick starting the apocalypse, because _that's_ the elephant in the room. Lucifer can do what the fuck he likes, Dean thinks, so what if he wants to dance the merengue using intestines as neckties and whatever else it is demons do to get off. And Sam is all woe me, I started the apocalypse, so what, Dean thinks, Castiel sacrificed himself to save her so she could save Sam, and Sam blew it.

Cas was wrong, she knows, she didn't love Sam more than him.

Right now, she can barely look at her brother.

And the blue eyes she expects to offer comfort, they're never going to come back.

She's never going to be loved, she knows that, Sam is too selfish, too wrapped up in the deliciousness of his own guilt and doesn't even think, doesn't even notice, doesn't ask. So fuck him, she thinks, and fuck the donkey he rode in on on his way to Jerusalem, give him the cross he wants, give him his crown of thorns, give him his spear of destiny.

Dean's just going to sit here and hold back the bile and the rage and the tears and the hate and the grief and watching _I love lucy_ reruns because it's what she always does.  



	27. The Lotus Eaters

The bed doesn't have magic fingers. It's the only thing that this missing from this picture. She has wine, costly wine, not the cheap shit she normally gets and doesn't even feel guilty that she's drinking $50 wine out of used maccy-d's cup.

She's sprawled across the bed in one of Sam's old hoodies from college, that hasn't fit him in a long time and she has long since stolen, panties and knee length socks. There is a joint hanging from her hands and the smoke curls slowly upwards as the music fills the air with it's slow sweetness.

This is it. She can't take any more, she's given all that she can a hundred times over, a thousand and they just want more. When does she get to say enough? When does she get to have a normal life, a family? They've taken all she has ever known as it is.

She takes a long pull from the joint before she lets her hand dangle back where it was and listens to the soft classic rock that she has got to play through the clock radio. Fuck it, fuck it all. She's done.

"I like this song," Castiel says softly, he just appears and he's going to try to talk her out of this retirement. She knows that and doesn't want to listen. "It lingers in the quiet places." His voice is even. He reaches over and takes the joint from her fingers and stubs it out beside the bed. "You shouldn't smoke in bed," he says, "it's dangerous."

She just laughs, sitting up long enough to take a mouthful of the wine before she flops back unto the bed. "Done worse."

"I have seen footage," Castiel says sitting beside her and running the tips of his fingers over her sprawled palm. "It is not pleasant to see."

She is waiting for it, the "you are needed" or some other detail where her own will is ignored. Instead he kicks off his shoes, and sloughs off his trench lying next to her on the bed. "When I was told that I would be your guide I assumed you would be a great soldier and that I would stand beside you. I did not know that I would feel for you the way that I do."

His face is beside her own and she waits for him to make some comment that will bring her back to the war, and will take everything she has left, as little as it is, those tihngs she claimed for herself.

He slips his palm, warm and slightly sweaty under her sweats, laying it flat upon her stomach. "I know god exists because how could he not when I love you so."

Dean stifles a sob, drunk, buzzed and wide open before him, and just lies there on the cheap motel bed, held in place by Castiel's breath and his palm on her stomach, and the sweet lingering of the classic rock from the radio.


	28. Amaranth

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."  
Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean's feet hurt. The shoes have ripped her raw and where they haven't there are blisters the size of golf balls. But she did it, and the look on Sam's face was almost worth the effort. Her ears are still ringing and if Castiel was not carrying her she's pretty sure she'd still be in the strip joint's green room.

Bobby gets her a bowl of tepid water as Cas sets her on the edge of the bed, setting it down then pulls a tube of salt from the back of his jeans and pours a healthy amount in.

Dean lowers her feet into the water with an audible hiss, as Bobby glowers at the angel, who still has his trench balled in Dean's fists and she wants to laugh, and scream and just appreciate the glory of the moment.

She'd forgotten what dancing in new shoes was like, but she went out on that stage and did her "heartbreaker" routine and no one could have known her heels were bleeding as they watched her dance, dressing down to her perfect prim white underwear and then stripping off the bra with her back to the audience.

Sam was horrified, but it gave Bobby the chance to get the Siren who was legitimately pissed. Then as she managed to get the shoes off with the closest she's come to prayer in a long time, "dear god, christ, sweet baby jesus" Cas is there with a smile and a robe, because nudity is a far second to getting the damn shoes off.

So she's back in the hotel, in the robe, clutching on to Cas' raincoat, her feet in a bowl of warm salt water with blisters the size of planets, Sam is out looking for brain bleach apparently, and Bobby turns to Castiel and his face is grim. "You better take care of her, boy" he says and Dean can't help but smile.


	29. Beauty fiend

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."  
Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean is sat on the bed watching Oprah when the door goes and Sam lifts his pistol to check. The girl is bland, blonde and touchy feely. She introduces herself, in a rush, as Becky and that Chuck sent her. She can't get her hands off Sam but when she looks at Dean she looks genuinely disgusted, like something is stuck to her shoe and she can't get it off. "You're exactly as I imagined you," she tells Sam, "you're not what I expected." She tells Dean.

And that's it, like the internet isn't already full of people who think she should be a boy, and she's not having the worst day ever, and this one is off the scale in pure suckage, she is split wide open like the fucking grand canyon right now. Sam jumpstarted the apocalypse. Castiel is dead and now this, this _fangirl_ is judging her.

"and just what were you expecting?" she turns. "Perhaps I'm supposed to look like Xena warrior princess in a leather skirt and high heels. I know, I'm supposed to look like Lara Croft, all bosoms and ass with thigh holsters and hair down to here." She makes a gesture at her waist. "I know, I'm supposed to be a lady, because only ladies can kick ass."

"But," Becky, she has introduced herself as Becky, starts.

"I know," Dean says, "it's not worth it, because afterall you're one of those freaky wincesters aren't you? you have this image that Sam and I get it on, and I'm not good enough because I don't look like you, right." Dean is too raw right now to enjoy this as much as she probably should. "Well guess what sister, I'm me, and do you know why that sucks for you, because I know what happens in the next twenty or so books Chuck has written, and if you don't shut up right this minute, believe you me I will tell you. I have one word for you, Becky," she enlongates the name, "Castiel, and all the reasons wincest is wrong."

Dean slams the door on her way out, sure if she stays a single second more she'll hurt this girl, this civilian.

"I was just going to say," Becky says, still with her hand on Sam's pectoral muscle, "that she wasn't as butch as I thought."


	30. Our Elaborate plans

Five years into the future and it could be another universe. Dean's used to hunters living like thieves on the fringes but this is something else, this is _surviving_. It's an old holiday camp with shored up lean-tos and army tents. They even have some of those plastic make do houses they used in places like Uganda. There are buildings but clearly not nearly enough and everywhere she looks people look tired and dirty, though water is clearly in abundance. On three sides the camp is surrounded by water.

It's a defensible position, and she knows why future her chose it. They have water and food from the lake, they have boats and easy access to the roads. It's a good choice. It just breaks Dean's heart to see it- To see herself.

She's sat on a wooden bench knitting, her hair gathered up and held with two smoothed off sticks, a gun in a holster on her thigh. She is teaching some of the others to knit, explaining the stitches patiently even as her own hands work quickly over the item she's making. Part of their self sufficiency kick are some sheep on an island in the lake, they shear them and make their own yarn, Chuck explained that. He explained about the crops they have scattered here and there, protected from the Croats.

This Dean isn't a warrior goddess, she's an earth mother, barefoot and heavily pregnant. She's gaunt and tired, her belly showing through the ill fitting clothes she's wearing, and she's not the only one. Others in the camp are pregnant as well. This is survival at it's best, Dean thinks, this is coping.

She's given a job sharpening tools because just because she's only here for a few days doesn't mean she can free-load and Dean's other, older self, is hard edged, brittle and relentless. "She resents you," Castiel says sitting down beside her, "she resents herself." Dean doesn't say anything. "He gave us his word he'd leave this place alone, she bargained herself for that." He sounds so sad that Dean wants to reach out and touch him, but this is not her Castiel, this one is softer, flabbier, with pupils blown and chapped lips. "She's only been here a few months and she's built this."

He sighs, "the angels left us high and dry, they washed their hands of it all and just left, and then she went to Detroit, to the palace He has there- to kill Him. She was going to sacrifice herself. She was gone for over a year. She came back with the promise. I don't know what she did to get it. I just thought you should know, for when you go back, so you don't make the same mistake she did."

The other Dean has put down her knitting for a moment and, leaning forward, hand on her bump as she explains what the girl has done, out of earshot. "They worship her, but they don't see her at night, holding her bump and singing "This is the end, Beautiful friend, This is the end My only friend, the end Of our elaborate plans, the end Of everything that stands, the end No safety or surprise, the end I'll never look into your eyes...again. Can you picture what will be So limitless and free Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand In a...desperate land." Dean knows the song, but it isn't one that she'd sing as a lullaby to the baby she will carry inside her. She wonders how long that year was for her future self, was it measured in minutes or lifetimes like Hell. She wonders why she sings such a tragic song to a life that blossoms amidst such waste.

"and the baby?" Dean asks. She wants Cas to say it's theirs, that they can have this, that they have something in the midst of all this destruction and death and fear.

"We're naming her Lulu, after her father."


	31. Opposite View

Dean isn't really surprised that her future self finds her inexpendable. That she finds herself at the edge of the water with a big tub washing laundry, that surprises her. When her future self comes along to sit with her bare feet in the water, her hands, branded with pentacles, protectively over her stomach and knitting needles stuck through the knot in her hair, that surprises her too.

She doesn't offer to help with the laundry.

"I don't know what to say to you." Her future self says. "I know you're probably a trick, some clever way to make one of us go mad. You're probably thinking the same of me, that this is some fake illusion of the future that Zachariah made up to scare you." She's quiet, her feet, Dean notices, are branded too. Her future self notices the scrutiny. "It's not why I'm not wearing shoes." She says, "my feet are too fat." Her hand absently strokes her belly. "We're a mess."

"I got that." Dean replies calmly.

"I can't wear a bra because my breasts are so sore, if Cas comes within ten feet of me I want to throw up, and everyone thinks its because of what happened, but someone," she looks at her belly, "just doesn't like the way he smells and..." she exhales loudly staring at her feet, kicking in the water. "I fucked up," she says. "We fucked up."

"Yeah," Dean agrees.

"I thought that I would tell you to say yes, honestly, after Detroit, after Reno, never mind Detroit. God I screamed it till I was hoarse, but they were gone. If you see Zachariah ask him why Michael doesn't ask himself. Ask him what makes him so fucking special? I just, I got to the point where I would have, but I was stubborn and I wanted him to ask me himself."

She starts to undo the buttons of her shirt. "Just, don't wait so long, make your decision."

"We've changed." Dean says as her counterpart strips and steps into the water, hair held up high.

"Yeah," her future self agrees. She looks back at Dean over her shoulder. "Here's my advice, of all the things I've learned in this fucked up five years between us. If you meet a man called Colonel Yates, as soon as he introduces himself, shoot him in the head. He will offer you things, he will," she stops, "not sexual, he's not interested in that, he has solutions and they will seem valid, they'll seem like good ideas. Detroit was his idea, not mine."

Dean is aware of her own loveliness as she bobs in the water of the lake, glad obviously to take the weight of her belly. "They didn't know who I was at first, too much water under the bridge. They recognised me as a vessel and branded me so I couldn't run, so I couldn't do much of anything. The pentacles," she snorts, "they liked the symbolism, they didn't do anything. It could have been anything."

"Lucifer was pissed when he found out. I was not to be harmed. I was to be taken to him." She's talking now, not for her younger self but for herself. Dean knows that. "It's all genetics," he says after a long period. "It's all in the blood. He," she stops again, "he came as Nick, never Sam, put Sam on hold somewhere and came as Nick, probably so I'd be better at fighting him."

Dean knows that under the surface of the lake her future self is holding her belly tight. "Just," she stops, "I don't know, I never fucking know, I just make do." She turns then, and laughs to herself, "You know, among the warriors and the farmers and the things we absolutely need, you know who's most valuable, this old man who happened to be an experimental archaeologist before the fall. God, Levenworth would give up all their arms for him and I'd probably turn them down. He's that valuable, and quarantine procedures, and fuck, Chuck whining about toilet paper and it's all you can do not to tell him to suck it up and use a fucking leaf like everyone else. And do you know what, I really want a fucking hug."

Dean doesn't know what to say, so instead she goes back to scrubbing the clothes in the water.


	32. Lie to me

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."

Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean is driving, Sam snoring in the back seat and the radio playing rock ballads to make the brain melt into nacho cheese. She doesn't even blink when Cas appears in the passenger seat, just flicks her eyes over disapprovingly so that he does his seat belt up. Accidents aren't a laughing matter and even if he's not going to get hurt her baby certainly will by a large man slamming into her windscreen.

She smiles as it clicks into place, even her sasquatch brother is strapped in in the back seat. She's pretty sure that he'd take out the dash as well.

Castiel sucks at small talk. It's one of the things she adores most about him, that no matter how calm and collected he appears he is like a rabbit in the headlights at the mention of the weather. "You look well." He says, but his eyes are wide and he's biting his lips nervously.

"Lie to me." She says, "tell me a story where we're somewhere else, where nothing matters but us. Tell me about how we were together and there was no apocalypse."

"I don't understand." Cas is simple, straightforward and she loves that about him.

"Tell me we're other people," she says, "lovers anywhere but here, tell me all the things we could have been if we'd been other people."

She thought at first she asked it of him so that he would be more at ease as he spoke, because sometimes she intimidates him and humanity baffles him on the whole.

"In Constantinople you were a lady of the Valide Sultan Dairesi and I a mere lordling, unworthy of your attention." His voice is deep and rich and she doesn't care that REO Speedwagon are on the radio, "and every day I would walk out to the Harem Ag(alar? Tas,l?g(? in the hope of seeing just a glimpse of you. I would ride out on great expeditions for the Sultan to bring back perfumes for your bath."

"Go on," she said, breathless.

"When I would return you would feign disinterest as you would run down the stairs to the Mabeyn Tas,l?g(? ve Dairesi to meet me, jumping into my arms and then catching yourself, pulling your veil back over your face and the smell of jasmine and frankincense in your black hair."

"Don't stop."

"It was the most beautiful building in all the world, and I only had eyes for you."

"More," she says through a thick throat as Bon Jovi of all things start on the radio.

"When the wind came from the sand, over the Bosphorous I would lie amongst your cushions and count out the stars reflected on your bare skin knowing that come morning that we would be killed and it would be worth it."

"Never mind," Dean snaps, the pleasant illusion broken. It seems they will always end in death. "You don't know how to play this game."


	33. Dance in the Dark

The dress is ruined and she'd been proud of it. Fabric dye and embellishments on an old good will dress and Patrick wanted to go with her. Even though it's not that late the skirt is beyond repair, four slashes across the stomacher and the skirt is just rags. One of the sleeves was used to start the fire.

Her hair is half flat on one side and her make up smudged and Dad, Dad just goes back out to find the next hunt, or to drink or whatever he does.

It was her prom dammit, and she'd tried so hard to be normal here. She'd made the fricking dress and the mortal remains of Amabel Goodwife couldn't wait a few hours. Or he couldn't take Sam. Sometimes she really resents her Dad and she knows Patrick wont have waited, even if some movie miracle happened and a new dress appeared from nowhere. Instead she pulls on her pj's and sits down on the couch next to Sam. Her hair is still half styled and her make up looks like Alice Cooper's and her life sucks enough that she just doesn't care. She kicked ass tonight, okay she broke her heel and had to limp home because of it and Dad was adamant she couldn't just take the damn things off and walk in her ruined stockings.

She'd looked gorgeous and she was glad Sam took a photo of it, of course it was to tease her with later but it meant that there was a record of it.

She plumps up the cushion on the couch and dumps it on Sam's lap, lying down with her head on his knee. "What are we watching?" she asks.

"Nothing much," Sam says, "some old horror movies, wanna watch Nightbreed?"

"Yeah," she says, it's about being outcast and she knows it's terrible but she can't help but love and associate with it. She and Sam know it backwards forwards and inside out, and it's one of the few vhs they have.

He moves her with a whine and pops the tape in the player. "You looked nice tonight," he offers.

"Just put the film on, or are we going to have a chick flick moment?" she says and tries to deny how it actually did help, just a little, to hear in the dark


	34. crashing down

Dean wants to reach out, to touch him. She can see Castiel break, she can see him at that exact moment where he shatters and his faith is undone, his back to her, his sentence left unfinished, left open as he obviously wants to scream obscenities at the door jamb of their crappy motel room. Her blood is still spattered here and there on the wall paper, caught in her hair no matter how many times she washed it.

All she can see is him breaking.

There's so much she wants to do, so much she wants to say.

She says nothing. She does nothing.

When he turns he has a look of apocalypse that she has never seen on him before.

If there was anything left inside her she supposes it would break, but she's blessedly numb.

"I don't need this any more," Cas says and drops her amulet back into her hand, the leather thong still warm from his skin.

Sam goes to say something, he tries to fix it with his puppy dog pout and hug monster arms but Cas is gone.

Dean looks at the amulet for a long moment, feels the weight of it, metal and memory, before she opens the door, dropping it into the trashcan as she walks past.


	35. Apocalypso

"Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire."  
Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean pulls the Impala into the old Lawrence graveyard with a blast of "Rock of Ages", she's tired but this is it, the end. Her two brothers, an idea still so new to her as to make her throat ache, two brothers, TWO, are standing facing each other but it's not them, not any more. It's two other brothers that have nothing to do with her.

"You test my patience, Girl," Lucifer says with Sam's voice.

"I just want five minutes, with both of you." She says, "I deserve that surely. You've waited milennia, five minutes won't hurt, will it?"

Lucifer narrows Sam's eyes, "I suppose so." He says, "Michael, do you agree?"

Michael sighs with Adam's throat and Dean hates that she doesn't know him well enough to know if the gesture is Michael or Adam. She is breaking apart but this is the last of it. She only has to hold together for a little while longer.

"Sam," she says, "i know you're still in there, I want you to know I knew this wasn't going to work but I'm not going to waste my goodbyes on I told you so, you believed it would and I believed in you, that was enough for me. I love you, no matter what, bitch."

She walked the three paces to Michael, "Adam, I'm sorry I didn't know you, but you're family and I love you too, I wish we had time so you could understand about what it means to have a sister, especially an older one, even if sometimes i would put nair in your shampoo." She pulls down his forehead and kisses it softly.

"Get on with it," Lucifer drawls.

"Oh, I am," Dean says then with her trademark grin as she jumps up to sit on the hood of the impala. "You see, I've been thinking, it's a girl thing I think, if I was a man I'd probably try to bull my way into this, convince Sam to take over, I don't know, but I'm not and if you gave me a beating you'd probably kill me before I was done." Lucifer's gaze is impassive but Michael looks amused. "So I looked at it and looked at it, and I realised something, something you both went to so much effort to hide from me." Her grin is cruel. This is a bluff, the biggest hand she's ever played, but if it works, if she can pull it off...

"I went to Hell, yadda yadda, old news, but I didn't break, I came to an epiphany, Alistair told me again and again if I cut I would break the first seal, I would set you free, Lucifer. And Michael, I know you were cast out for hurting him, or failing to kill him, it doesn't matter which." Adam's face tightens with Michael's rage. "And I was there for thirty years with Alistair telling me again and again of the horrors you'd wreak, but all I remember was thinking, you're trapped here too and unlike all the other souls around me, I can set you free." She smiles to herself, "it wasn't pity, it wasn't avarice, it was compassion. Those other souls were damned, and they craved it, the pain was like catharsis, they enjoyed it in their way, but you, you were trapped and I could set you free, so I did. I never expected to be sprung, not in a million years, but I could do that."

She scratches at her neck at the healing hickey there, from Castiel, it matches the other bruises he gave her, "I chose to break, and you know what that means, I chose to set you both free, or at least to start the process that saw you both released from bondage, so you know what that means, what you both were so careful to hide from me. You owe me!"

Lucifer takes a step back, his eyes flick to Michael and Michael nods. "I suppose you want us to leave."

"Actually," Dean replies, "I want my brothers back but as I said, I was thinking, rock is good for that. Lets just say I spent a lot of time on the toilet," Sam would get that joke. "A human lifetime, that's what i'm going to ask for. You wait a human lifetime, send Sam and Adam into some new babies, let them live happy lives away from all this bullshit, take their bodies and live out their human lives, then, at the end of it, if you still want to wipe this planet clean, go for it. If humanity itself can't convince you it doesn't deserve to be saved. I'll go somewhere else, somewhere where I won't look for you. That's my offer, I'll forget the debt, wipe it clean, but those are my terms. What do you say, boys, do we have a deal?"


	36. Sunburn

Fic: Sunburn  
Author: Seraphim Grace  
Fandom = Supernatural  
Pairing = Castiel/Girl!Dean  
Rating = G  
Notes - Title from Muse  
unbeated  
Soundtrack - Sunburn Muse

“Half angel and half bird. And all a wonder and a wild desire.”  
Robert Browning- O lyric love

Dean kneels on the soil, there is a pad she knows she should use, but she likes the feel of the ground and grass under her skin. The day is proving warm and she is glad that she wore her shorts, her favourite hunting jeans with the legs hacked away. She is wearing gloves because the nettles sting, even if they do make the tea that settles her stomach when the night comes. This house, small as it is, is hers, this vegetable patch, is hers. After a lifetime of killing things she has learned the simple pleasure of making things live. 

The apocalypse is done and gone. The battle ended and a temporary truce held, but it should hold for the rest of her life. It's over, and in the wake of it, she has found this place, with Old Alice, who grows the herbs that the hunters use. The same hunters who when they see her, take off their caps and smooth down their hair, and she hasn't the heart to tell them who she is. She takes their compliments and hands them their Balm of Gilead in a little paper envelope, putting their money in the tin.

None of the hunters would dare cheat Old Alice, going blind in her old age, because they know that she is the one who knows the herbs, and how easy it would be to switch one for another when life and death matter. They smile nervously at Dean, and she just throws her braid over her shoulder and sighs. When they offer to help her with the compost she lets them, but that's as far as it goes.

The agrimony is about ready to be harvested, it works best dried, she thinks, she looks at her basket, full already, and wonders if there is room, even as she wipes the blade of the silver knife. This is home now, with old Alice and her garden that Dean is learning to love with all of her heart. This is what happens after the war. The sun is burning the back of her neck, under her hat and she doesn't care. She squinted at the sky, there was rain coming, she'd have to bring in the agrimony today, otherwise it might be too late when the heavy summer rains came. She stood up, shaking the dry earth and broken blades of grass from her legs, and went to lift her basket. She would have to fetch the second one.

Castiel stands there, on the gravel path that wound between the seed beds, holding out her basket. "Hello, Dean," he says softly.

Dean takes a deep breath, savouring the sweet air in her lungs because otherwise she doesn't know what she'll do, takes the basket with the same thanks she'd offer any hunter in his place and returns to the dark of the drying shed.


	37. Change (in the house of flies)

When Cas appears she doesn't look at him. In fact she doesn't even turn around to look in his direction. She stands at the bedroom mirror exactly as she was but she acknowledges him with a tightness in her shoulders, a stiffness that wasn't there before.  
  
“Hello,Cas," she says but she doesn't wait for him to answer as she peels her shirt off. She was going to shower and he's not going to stop her. The shirt it covered in muck and fertiliser and she’s not sure if she’s going to have to burn it or launder it. Burning looks like the most obvious option. Her day has not gone well and this is just the icing it needs clearly.   
  
“Did you know, before I met you, before I made the deal, I was captured by a djinn." Her face remains impassive as she steps out of her jeans to stand there, with her back to him, in just worn bra and panties. Her hands have all new calluses from maintaining the herb beds for Alice. “It was..." she stops. “It was among the worst experiences of a very bad life.  
  
“My Mom was alive, there  though not my dad, probably because I would have punched him in the face had I seen him, even if it took me years to recognise it. And Sam was marrying Jess, and I was married too, and I was going to have a baby.” There is a noise behind her, a choked angry sound. “But all the people I had saved were dead, every last one of them and...” She pauses. “So I went to the warehouse where I was being held outside the illusion and I,” she stopped, “I gutted myself like a fish, and do you know what I figured out, love." She uses the sobriquet like an insult as she unclasps her bra, shaking her breasts out because it's the best thing to do after a day in an underwired bra, not because she wants him to make that stuttering noise he does.  
  
“It’s the only time I wasn't the one left behind.” She closes the bathroom door behind her.


	38. Chapter 38

"Let’s take Jesus off the dashboard  
Got enough on his mind  
We both know just what we’re here for  
Saved too many times"

\--

The motel room had a plastic Jesus in the bathroom. He was beatifically staring at a suspicious stain on the ceiling as Dean stripped down for her shower. It wasn't the worst thing she'd found sat on a bathroom shelf but she couldn't help but notice the position of his hands, held out for a blessing she knew, but looking like he was cradling a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It shouldn't have made her laugh but she was tired.

The plaid shirt was ruined, carved up like Christmas turkey but her denim jacket, unsalvagable, trashed on the way home, had taken the worst of it, leaving four hot red scratches on her back. Sam didn't think that they'd scar.

They wouldn't be the first ones.

Her body was a roadmap of scars and bruises. The wider straps of her sports bra covered a nub from a broken collarbone that hadn't quite set right, six weeks in a sling and pain killers strong enough she had burst into random bouts of singing meatloaf, because everyone knew that good girls go to heaven but bad girls go everywhere. Long sleeves covered the burns on her left wrist and the cuts on her right. A fitted tee with a round collar and no one needed to know about the silver mark just under her supra sternal notch. Jeans were practical, but they covered the whip marks around her legs, left by claws and who knew what else. Other girls were beautiful, but Dean was a hunter.

Long sleeves, long pants, woolly tights when she needed to wear a skirt for the sheriff or whoever. Never show skin, she learned, it invited questions about the scars. Random hook ups, no, leave off the lights, murmured into someone else's mouth.

And yet Jesus stood on the bathroom shelf, looking through her with painted eyes as she stripped down to practical briefs and the ruins of a sports bra, twisting to see the marks on her back. And for all the scars, for the bruises, teeth mark on the inside of her knees, a hand print around her throat because not all monsters were supernatural, but they all went down eventually, and she rested her weight on the sink with her hands, with blood dried into the creases of the skin, and two fingernails torn away. She took a deep breath, then she smashed Jesus against the side of the bath.


End file.
